“With this sampler, you will come to know what it truly means to achieve the ultimate download experience via nine tracks encoded in professional-quality 96/24 audio, all handpicked for your maximum enjoyment and enlightenment. In short, it’s what great sound is all about. If you’ve never been engrossed by music this way before—or even if you’re a veteran of the compression wars—you’re in for quite a treat. Happy listening. Ready, set, immerse!” Mike Mettler Editor-In-Chief, SOUND+VISION

1.) Madeleine Peyroux, “The Kind You Can’t Afford” (from Standing on the Rooftop) Courtesy of EmArcy/Decca/Universal Music Group

Everything on the Sound+Vision HDtracks Ultimate Music Experience Sampler is encoded in professional-quality 96/24 audio. The newer recordings are taken straight from original high-resolution digital recordings. The older recordings are transferred to high-resolution digital audio from original master tapes. Both will give you much better sound than you’ve ever heard before from these recordings and artists.

What do you want to hear when you listen to music? Do you want lower fidelity version of what the artists, engineers, and producers heard in the studio? Or would you prefer to hear exactly what they heard in the studio? Of course, you’d prefer the latter. But you’re probably getting the former — unless, that is, you’re listening to high-resolution downloads from HDtracks. If you’re listening to CDs, MP3s, or even vinyl records, what you’re hearing is not a precise copy of the original digital recording or analog tape. It’s downconverted. If it’s on CD, the digital resolution has been reduced. If it’s on vinyl, the audio has been remastered and the record you’re listening to is actually a third-generation mechanical copy. Sure, it might sound OK. But it’s not the best fidelity you can get. HDtracks is.

WHAT IS HIGH-RESOLUTION AUDIO?Basically, high-resolution audio has more information and thus better fidelity. It’s like comparing a 1-megapixel image from a digital camera with an 8-megapixel image. Just as you see more detail in a high-resolution image, you hear more detail in high-resolution audio. That’s why professionals use high-resolution digital audio in the studio. Unfortunately, they then have to reduce the resolution to get it onto CDs. On a CD, each audio sample is stored using 16 digital bits, which means a CD can produce 65,536 different volume gradations. That may seem like a lot, until you calculate that the 24-bit high-resolution downloads on HDtracks can produce 16,777,216 volume gradations! That’s more detail, more depth, and more subtlety. It’s also less noise: With CDs, the noise is 96 dB below the highest sound level. With HDtracks high-resolution downloads, it’s 144 dB below. Digital audio on CDs is sampled at 44.1 kHz, or 44,100 times per second. This gives CD a frequency response of about 20 kHz. HDtracks high-resolution downloads are sampled at 96 or 192 kHz, yielding frequency responses ofslightly less than 48 kHz and 96 kHz, respectively. Some audiophiles feel that even though you can’t hear sounds at those high frequencies, you can in some way sense them. Some audiophiles think that higher sampling rates sound better because the filters used to pre-condition the audio signal for digital recording are at much higher frequencies so their negative effects can’t be heard. Indeed, both contentions have their merits.

Reviews

"With this sampler, you will come to know what it truly means to achieve the ultimate download experience via nine tracks encoded in professional-quality 96/24 audio, all handpicked for your maximum enjoyment and enlightenment. In short, it’s what great sound is all about. If you’ve never been engrossed by music this way before—or even if you’re a veteran of the compression wars—you’re in for quite a treat. Happy listening. Ready, set, immerse!" Mike Mettler Editor-In-Chief, SOUND+VISION